Sunday, December 26, 2010

LA BOEHME

So it’s Boxing Day and a line from the Dr. Who Christmas Special resonates. “We’re halfway to the light.” About the best description would be that I’m comfortably numb, and safe in the knowledge that, now I don’t drink a fraction of what I did in yules of yore, many folks out in Christendom quantum are, beyond a doubt, far more hungover than I am. Thus I was able to read the column from The New York Times sent by the esteemed Munz in which Maureen Dowd lauds Patti Smith as Queen of Bohemia. I used to think Dowd was exceptionally hot in her red high heels, but then she wrote a whole bunch of silly shit over the last eighteen months, and even tried to promote a feud with Hilary Clinton, and I kinda went off her. Fickle maybe, but fantasy lust must have its limits. Of course, I’m more than happy that Dowd has recognized Patti, but I rather baulked at her attempt to turn Patti's memoir of the relationship with Robert Maplethorpe into something unque and grandly operatic when it seemed more like a maybe noble but basically everyday story in any ethical and compassionate counterculture. I detected in Dowd a trace of that anthropological tone adopted by squares when confronted by territories they neither know nor trust, understand or even want to. I have ventured into the land of Dowd. It’s not a nice place to visit and they wouldn’t let me live there. This only serves to convince me that the true power is in the tribe, and we should never forget that. Lucky white heather anyone?